Victory is not inevitable

My blood is still boiling over the recent murder by beheading of an American citizen at the hands of the terrorist group ISIL, or ISIS, or whatever these murderous fools call themselves. Their real name is EVIL.

I listened to the president last week as he appropriately conveyed Americans’ revulsion at this savage act and our grief at the Foley family’s loss. As usual, the president’s words were very eloquent. To his credit, the president was unequivocal regarding the evil of this terrorist group, and he took the time to list some of their crimes against humanity.

But there is a major problem with the president’s remarks. While he does a nice job of explaining our horror, his remarks on what America will do about it are insufficient, naïve, and just plain weak.

The president said that when people harm Americans, “we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done and we act against ISIL, standing alongside others.” What? Here’s an idea — how about we offer these people death instead of justice?

I understand that the president of the United States should not be prone to wild rhetoric. But this is ridiculous. “Justice” generally conjures up images of a courtroom with a government-provided defense attorney. Here’s another way the president could phrase it: “We will hunt them down and kill them.” And as for the president’s phrase “standing alongside others,” what does that mean? We should hunt and kill the people who did this completely, regardless of who stands with us.

The president also said the people of Iraq, “must continue coming together to expel these terrorists from their community.” Um, no. They do not need to be expelled. They need to be eliminated.

You may argue that I’m merely quibbling with words here. No, the issue is far bigger than that.

In fact, the most important thing the president said about these terrorists was this: “People like this ultimately fail. They fail because the future is won by those who build and not destroy.”

Those are some reassuring and sweet sounding words. A focus group would no doubt respond positively to this comforting sentiment from the president of the United States. There’s only one problem — it’s a lie, a lie that could only be believed by a person who never took a history class.

This is the crux of the matter — we have a president who is disturbingly naïve and holds a dangerous utopian view of the world and the dangers therein. Earlier this year, President Obama downplayed the danger of the ISIS, comparing these terrorists to a “junior varsity” team that does not pose the same threat as Al-Qaeda. For him now to assert, “people like this ultimately fail because the future is won by those who build and not destroy,” is flat out absurd.

The truth is, these people will only fail if we cause them to fail. It is not inevitable. Causing them to fail requires that they be defeated, destroyed, and, yes, killed. I bet the focus group would get a little uncomfortable with those words.

In World War II, we did not win the future by building, we won it by destroying. Uncomfortable or not, that is the truth. The murderous fools who cut the heads off of Americans must be destroyed, and sent to their reward, such as it is, in the next life.